Slow Saturday

It's a pretty slow Saturday around here. I groomed Scruffy and have been playing around the computer and found some pictures I meant to post but forgot to. I use to catch horney toads when I was a kid....in March this little guy was on our drive way so I caught him so the kids could see him....he had been hurt. After they came home from school, they took him out to the field and set him free.

This picture is of Kinzi and her best friend Arica. In the first one they are making scrapbook pages and in the second they are just being cute.

This is Nathan after he got his bottom braces on. Can you see them?

Spring Band Concert

Mackinzi performed in the Spring Band Concert last night at her school. She has improved 1000% since Christmas. This picture is before the concert. The boy on the right side (as your looking at the picture) is my best friend, Diane's son, Gunnar.

Mackinzi is in beginning band. They played three songs but the one I've uploaded is her favorite song. It's called Smoke on the Water. (Note: if you subscribe to the news feed you'll have to go to the website to view the video.)

Chuck and the kids walking

Here's a few more pictures taken during our trip to Baton Rouge. I added the one of Nathan and Chuck from 10 years ago to see how much they have changed.

Chuck 41, Kinzi 10

Chuck 41, Nathan 13

Chuck 31, Nathan 3

Baton Rouge Trip

We had a great weekend in Baton Rouge. Chuck's brother, Drew, graduated from LSU on Friday. Chuck, the kids and I flew up on Thursday (we took the kids out of school for two days). While we were in Baton Rouge, we went to Drew's graduation, went to the LSU bookstore, viewed the LSU mascot... Mike (a tiger), went to Drew's graduation, went on a swamp tour, and geocached. We had no fun getting home...more on that later!

Drew's graduation was nice....a typical long graduation but nice. It's good to see him finish college. We sat by Edie and Chris (Chuck's mom and sister) and Chris's 9 month old baby, Riley. Riley is a cutie!

Holly and Drew had a party that evening. A bunch of their friends were there as well as Holly's family, Edie, Chris and all of us. They had the biggest BBQ and craw fish boil I've seen (I don't see many craw fish boils but it was big!). Toward dark we took the kids geocaching by Holly and Drew's house and all of us were eaten alive by GIANT SWAMP MOSQUITOES....crap they grow them big there!

LSU's mascot died last year and they have a new tiger this year along with a beautiful new habitat. I think Holly told me it was about 1 Million bucks....I may be dreaming that but I think that is what she told me.

On Saturday, we all met up with everyone and went on a Swamp Tour. It was very cool. We learned that Henry Ford used the moss from that swamp to stuff his upholstered seats. Henry Ford also used the cedar that the moss was shipped in for the running boards on his cars. It was interesting. The swamp was very high so we didn't get to see any alligators even though they live there. The crazy cajun guide was looking for them.

We spent a lot of time on Saturday geocaching around the city. We found some caches that were smaller than a fingernail. It was a lot of fun. We were able to fit in seeing the new Narnia movie as well!

On Sunday, our flights started out well. We made it to DFW without problem but from DFW things started not going well. We got on a plane to come back to Tucson only to learn they had a problem. We sat on the plane for a hour or so then they made us get off. They had us wait 45 more minutes to see if they could find another plane and of course they couldn't. They just cancelled the flight. We were able to get back to Tucson via Delta only because Chuck is a gold member because of all the traveling he has done. We were suppose to get home at 1:00 in the afternoon instead we got home at 10:30 at night. American had our luggage and we managed to be part of a handful of people that made it back to Tucson on Wednesday....over 200 more pieces of luggage from our canceled flight were waiting to be claimed.

Having a canceled flight is not a big deal except it was my turn to host Bunko on Monday night. We came home to find out that my best friend, Diane, had cleaned my house and got it ready for me....Holy Cow....that was an incredible thing....Not only did she clean my house, they had Scruffy over the weekend and let Scruffy sleep on the bed at their house. What a spoiled puppy we have!

Here's some pictures!

We're at a lake geocaching by the capital.

Kinzi is using the GPS to search for a cache.

A duck protecting a cache we found!

A river rat? beaver? sea creature?.....same lake

Kinzi pointing to river rat.


Nathan driving tour boat.

Riley driving tour boat.

Swamp

Swamp



LSU mascot sleeping

Our group on the swamp tour boat.

Crazy cajun and tour guide.

Kinzi driving tour boat.

Geocaching More geocaching
Geocaching

A train near a geocache we were searching for.

The Blanks are Tree huggers

We're offically treehuggers! We bought a new car today and it's a hybrid. The picture below is off the Honda website...we bought a Honda Civic Hybrid! Chuck ended up going to Las Vegas to pick it up today because they've been sold out here in Arizona for weeks and are 3 - 4 months backlogged if you order one. They had some in stock in Las Vegas. Chuck got 45 miles to the gallon coming home today...it took 10 gallons of gas to go 458 miles! Holy crap!

We bought a new car because the kids will be going to school in town next year and our cars cost a fortune!


Chuck doesn't like the picture I've attached so when I have time I'll post a picture of ours. Edie bought a Civic as well this past week!

Happy Mother's Day

We celebrated Mother's Day today because Chuck will be going out of town tomorrow. The kids got me a citrine (topaz) necklace and earrings and a new inside grill. Kinzi made me a coupon holder at girl scouts and a really cool thing from her class. I don't know what to call it but it's decorative and it holds seeds and pastas. It's very pretty. Nathan made me a pot in is art class. All in all it was a very good day. Kinzi, as usual, makes the funniest cards. Inspired by the Hallmark characters and a Mother's Day Card Deb sent....Kinzi's card to me is below!

Front of card:

Unfolded inside of card:

Kinzi's video project.

Hi all! Here is a video Mackinzi and her two best friends made for a class project. This is a big file but it's only 5/6 minutes long. Her class read Owl's in the Family and they had to act out one scene from the book. They chose to do a lake scene and then they added their bloopers and silly things at the end. The reason you see the green net in the movie is that is was very windy the day they filmed and they were unable to keep the canoe from floating away without it.